Monday, October 29, 2007

ICONS in the NOTIFICATION AREA

Bill Comis said...
Question??

How do I get rid of the unwanted little icons that come up at the lower right corner? I am told that the slow down start up my computer?


Though the time required for the computer to initialize on startup is affected by the number of programs starting other factors such as procedures scheduled to commence at startup (i.e. virus scans, hard drive utilities, hardware utilities, software utilities, etc.) have a far greater impact on boot up time. The time required to initialize a few software programs should not be that noticeable whereas the time necessary to scan your computer can be considerable. If your computer is taking a long time to boot up investigate the role of any and all utility programs.

Programs stealthily running will have an effect on the computers response time once you are up and running. Some of the programs (shown in the Notification Area) are insignificant users of CPU resources or are necessary. It is recommended that you first experiment by deactivate those unwanted programs for a session or two so as to evaluate the affect and/or importance on your usage. Most programs shown in the “Notification Area” can be temporarily shut down by right clicking directly on the icon and then selecting the appropriate action from the menu. On rebooting the computer these programs will reactivate and the icon will appear.

Certain programs were authorized to start on boot up (and run in the background) when they were originally installed and a shortcut to that program was placed in the STARTUP folder. To remove the shortcut from the STARTUP folder (and from appearing in the Notification Area);
1. Right click on START
2. Select EXPLORE. This brings you to the START MENU in Windows Explorer with the START MENU folder already selected in the left hand panel.
3. In the left panel, left click on PROGRAM (directly below START MENU).
4. In the left panel scroll down and left click on STARTUP.
5. In the right panel, Right click on any program you wish to delete from startup and select DELETE shortcut.
6. Exit from Windows Explorer in the usual manner.

Note that when you complete step 2 above you are in the DOCUMENTS & SETTING. In the left panel (either above or below the highlighted START MENU folder) it will indicate which computer user is being evaluated (All Users, Default User or a common name). After completing all the steps above you may wish to repeat the process for each user in case a STARTUP program is authorized therein. After step 2, click on the user (i.e. All Users), scroll down to and left click on START MENU and proceed with step 3.

To have a program automatically start on boot up, create a shortcut to that program and place it in the STARTUP file of the START MENU.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have several ICONS that I would like to delete. This article will help me a lot. JW

Anonymous said...

GREAT blogging